


room to breathe

by whiskeycherrypie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood Drinking, Boy King of Hell Sam Winchester, Demon Dean Winchester, Dreams and Nightmares, Episode: s15e04 Atomic Monsters, First Time, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Schmoop, Season/Series 15, Season/Series 15 Spoilers, Sharing a Bed, Supernatural (TV) Spoilers, Visions in dreams, it is however mainly about their canonical versions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-27 02:28:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21384580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeycherrypie/pseuds/whiskeycherrypie
Summary: It's not Sam's last dream. But the next time, Dean is there for him.In the solitude of Sam’s room, the dream echo of Dean’s neck snapping is as loud as a gunshot.He’s given up on trying to force his eyes closed a while ago and instead he just stares at the ceiling, focusing on the dull gray of it in the dark. Not red. It’s not red, the bunker is not in danger - fromhimself- and Dean’s just down the hall.Down the hall feels pretty damn far right now.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 77
Kudos: 334





	room to breathe

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through s15e04 Atomic Monsters. I've gone wild about the set dressing of Sam having two pillows, and him turning to look at the other side of bed like he was looking for Dean after his nightmare. So behold, a fic at least partially addressing it, and exploring what other AU visions Sam might have.
> 
> First time late season wincest yay!
> 
> Title is from Sounds of Someday, Jensen's song used in the episode. The album is great stuff!

In the solitude of Sam’s room, the dream echo of Dean’s neck snapping is as loud as a gunshot. 

He’s given up on trying to force his eyes closed a while ago and instead he just stares at the ceiling, focusing on the dull gray of it in the dark. Not red. It’s not red, the bunker is not in danger - from himself - and Dean’s just down the hall.

Down the hall feels pretty damn far right now. 

When he hears the steps, it doesn’t register at first as something real. He thinks he’s floating in some half-awake, half-dreaming state, already slipping into yet another night terror, but then awareness washes over him and he turns his head just in time to see shadows pass by the air vents in door. Hunting instinct, he realizes. What he’s hearing is real and it’s waking him up.

“Dean?”

The door cracks open just a bit and Dean sticks his head in. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

He sounds guilty, caught, and Sam props himself up on an elbow. 

“You didn’t.”

Dean sighs, opening the door more. There must be a lamp on down the hallway, maybe all the way back in the kitchen, because Dean brings in some light in with him, his silhouette becoming clearer. “Still bad dreams?”

“Not when I’m not sleeping,” Sam tries to joke, but it comes out flat and way too raw.

And then Dean is inside the room, closing the door behind him. A step, two, then the unmistakable whoosh of fabric and mattress stuffing as he sits down on the bed.

A treacherous, torturous and needy part of Sam rears its head with vengeance. He appreciated Dean’s ribbing with the bacon. He appreciated the talk on the way back from the case too. But he wants more. There’s a gaping hole in his chest, sucking in all his air every time he remembers them, any of them. Mom, Jack, dad, Jess and Rowena and so many others… 

He shouldn’t want to use Dean to close that hole. He shouldn’t. He should probably… get therapy or something. Hey, maybe there are therapists who know about what goes bump in the night. Who he could talk to without obscuring most of what happened. Or he could just work through it, just put one feet in front of the other until he could breathe again. Anything, everything, would be healthier than just desperately grasping after his big brother and asking him “please. Fix me.”

But even if he had the willpower to do any of that, one thing would still stop him: it’s Dean, genuinely here, so damn worried, with his quiet listening and his jokes and now with this; his presence. His closeness. He flops down on Sam’s bed, casual as you please, arranging the pillow that Sam absolutely didn’t put there for him under his head. It’s stupid, how well they can read each other. He knows that Dean noticed it, the two pillows neatly next to each other where before Sam only had the one, right in the middle. 

Message received, loud and clear, and promptly responded to.

It’s getting warmer in the room already, two bodies heating the closed space instead of just one. Sam could probably fall asleep now; no saying how his dreams would go, but he could sleep. Except now he kind of doesn’t want to, not when the alternative is just enjoying the fact that Dean is right there, within reach.

Dean’s quiet, and so is he. It’s going to take a while before he can say he’s anywhere near content, much less happy, but this helps. Dulls the pain to something bearable. 

* * *

He doesn’t notice falling asleep until he finds himself in a wholly unfamiliar place. It’s a mansion, or something like that, modern and a little chaotic. Oddly shaped lounge furniture stands out against the backdrop of ceiling wide windows overlooking a cityscape at night. It might be L.A. Everything is either black or stark white or- or splattered with blood, and the place seems so chaotic because there are bodies strewn over nearly every surface. Still and broken and many mangled beyond recognition, Sam stares at them for a long while before he realizes that there’s movement in the room too. Up on a large mahogany bar, littered with broken liquor glasses, is Dean, naked save for an unbuttoned black shirt that hangs off his shoulders. He’s leaning back on his hands, thighs splayed wide, head thrown back as he laughs. And between his legs stands Sam, bare chested too, suit pants low on his hips.

Like before in his dream of the bunker, Sam can’t look away. Invisible forces pull him closer until he’s right next to them, seeing in crystal clear definition as Dean straightens and pulls Sam into a kiss, their teeth clashing in apparent hunger. When they pull back, there’s a smear of blood.

Both their eyes are black.

They breathe against each other for a while, silent communication passing between them; Sam wouldn’t dare hope to know what it is. Then Sam - the other Sam - pulls out a small blade from his pocket. Terrified that he will be forced to watch Dean die again, Sam instinctively opens his mouth to shout a warning, but then, with uncanny speed, the other Sam flicks the tip of the blade over Dean’s inner thigh, almost by his crotch. He drops to his knees then and seals his mouth over the bleeding cut while he wraps his hand around Dean’s cock and begins to stroke.

Paralyzed, Sam can do nothing but watch it happen. Watch himself alternate between sucking his demon brother’s blood and then spitting it onto his cock just to suck and lick it all off again and again. Watch Dean, the demonic version of himself, pull Sam’s hair and offer his ass for fucking, whispering filth all the while, black eyes gleaming with desire.

But that’s not the worst part. It should be terrible beyond words, it should turn Sam’s stomach, and it does, fuck, it turns his stomach because there’s so much blood and there’s literal carnage around them, they are fucking between mutilated corpses, but the worst part is that they’re together, they’re on the same page; nothing like that roughened version of Dean trying to hunt Sam down, and for that reason Sam feels a sliver of relief, just a tiny, guilty speck of a thought that says: “this is not so bad”.

* * *

His horror at that realization wakes him up; or maybe Dean does, because when Sam gasps, eyes opening, Dean is right there, squeezing his arm almost painfully.

“Hey, hey, hey, you’re good, you’re okay, you’re awake now…”

Dean moves his hand from Sam’s arm to his chest, patting him a little awkwardly and his fingers brush over Sam’s nipple - and his nipples are tight and sensitive, and fuck, he’s also hard. Unthinking, he launches himself backwards, jerking away from Dean, landing on the floor with nothing but tangled blankets cushioning the fall.

And that was a very stupid idea because Dean’s turning on the lamp and Sam is just sitting on the floor, knees splayed from the fall, a hard-on tenting his boxers.

“Dude,” Dean says slowly, kneeling on the bed, looking at Sam like he just grew a second head. “I thought you were having _nightmares_.”

“I am! I was… Jesus.” There’s not much dignity to be found, but Sam gives it his best effort, tugging his feet from the tangle and standing up, snatching the blanket up to cover himself with it, gingerly sitting back on the bed. “That was the most fucked up thing that I’ve ever-”

Dean winces at him in sympathy. The alarm on the nightstand shows it’s just after 3am; they still need to sleep.

“Sorry, I… you don’t have to stay, I don’t want to freak you out.”

“I’m okay if you’re okay,” Dean tells him. “I get it, you know, wires get crossed, especially in dreams.”

Sam might prefer if Dean kept on making fun of him. The concern just makes him all the more aware how bad things have gotten. Dean settles on his side, hand under his head.

“So, what was it? Clowns? I bet it was clowns.”

On second thought… Sam huffs and lies back. “Shut up and go to sleep.”

“Come on, maybe if you say it out loud, it will be more ridiculous than scary.”

“It wasn’t clowns,” Sam insists. He needs to process what he saw. Or maybe he needs to just fucking forget it instantly. Fuck, the two of them were so filthy. Bloody and crazed and putting their mouths like everywhere on each other, and oh yeah, they were demons - or close enough in Sam’s case - but they were still brothers. They weren’t possessed, it was them. How does his mind come up with shit like that?

Maybe it doesn’t. Sam shuts the door on that thought. It was just him, getting so high on Dean’s presence. If he were to rationalize it, he could admit that he’s been needing Dean a lot. Wanting his company, knowing it’s the only thing that keeps him afloat. All his dream did was enhance it, turn it all Texas Massacre, demon brothers style. Demon blood used to be his addiction, now the only thing he truly needs is Dean, so… in a fucked up way, it makes perfect sense.

Case solved.

Except when he glances at Dean, wanting to tell him to turn the light off, he finds him studying Sam’s face with sharp focus, clearly deep in thought.

“What? Come on, it was fucked up, I’m not telling you what it was, let’s just go to sleep.”

“Fucked up, huh?” Dean repeats, voice unreadable. Almost like he’s mad at Sam. “You were saying my name.”

Oh no. Oh fuck. Sam startles, mouth opening silently, scrambling for something, anything to say. “I-”

Dean’s blank expression morphs into a triumphant grin. “Oh, you sucker. Gotcha.”

He’s laughing now and Sam is having a fucking whiplash. “I wasn’t, was I? I wasn’t talking, I never do in my sleep, Jesus, Dean…”

“Nope,” Dean says with a pop. “And thank fuck for that.”

Sam tries to laugh along with Dean, but they both quiet down way too quickly. Dean’s back to studying his face.

“I actually freaked you out, didn’t I?” Dean says thoughtfully. “Is that- did you?”

Sometimes it’s handy, but sometimes Sam really, really hates how well they can read each other. Dean can be a fucking hound when he wants to, sniffing out the exact root of the problem on Sam. He groans, rubbing his eyes, then reaching behind his head to grab his pillow and put it over his face instead. Maybe if he smothers himself, this conversation will be over. But Dean only waits about twenty seconds before pulling the pillow away from Sam’s face.

“It’s fine, Sammy, everybody wants a piece of this fine ass.”

Which sends Sam right back to the memory of all the things his demonic version was doing to Dean’s demonic ass. And actually, why should he be the only one mortified about it?

He looks Dean right in the eye. “We were demons.”

“We- oh.”

It shouldn’t be, but it’s kind of satisfying to turn it back on Dean. The teasing glint is gone from his eyes and he’s looking at Sam a little dubiously instead. The silence stretches and Sam wonders if he took it a step too far. It’s one thing for Dean to tease him about maybe possibly having sex dreams involving him, but it’s another for Sam to turn around and confirm it. 

He thinks if Dean put some space between them as a result of this bizarre night conversation that he would crack.

Dean opens his mouth, then closes it. Sam’s still stretched on his back and Dean is leaning towards him, the bed not really allowing for all that much space between them. They shouldn’t be having conversations like this half dressed, lying down, in the middle of the night, closed off from the world by steel and salt. They shouldn’t be having conversations like this, period.

“Okay, question. You don’t have to answer. It’s…” Dean hesitates. Sam shrugs at him wordlessly to let him know he can go on. What could possibly go more wrong, right? “When you didn’t have a soul… did you, I mean, I get that emotions were a no show, but you did want some things, right? There still had to be things that kept you going, that set what you were going to do with yourself. And you had no moral compass. Did you want…”

He can’t say it, which Sam understands. Unfortunately, he knows exactly what Dean is asking.

“I can’t answer that,” he says, swallowing dryly.

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Won’t.”

“Well, that’s an answer,” Dean says. “For what it’s worth, when I was a demon, I…”

Sam doesn’t need him to say it either. He sees, with sudden clarity, just how accurate his dream was, no matter where it came from. 

“I get it,” he says and it comes out a little too sharp and Dean flinches. Sam’s hand shoots out almost without a thought, wrapping around Dean’s wrist. “It’s fine. We’re good. We’re good, right?”

“Yeah,” Dean says immediately, and it’s like a breath of relief rushing out of him. He slumps even closer to Sam, then after a while pulls his wrist from Sam’s grip and turns to shut the lamp off. They’re plunged into darkness, eyes not adjusted to the lack of light yet and Sam reaches out again, irrationally wanting to make sure Dean’s still there even though he can hear him breathing, can hear the shuffle of the sheets as Dean settles to sleep. His hand skims over Dean’s side, he bumps into his arm and then it’s his wrist that’s caught, arm dragged upwards.

And then - that’s lips and stubble and just a hint of wetness and Dean is kissing his palm. Sam’s heart stops in his chest before remembering itself and setting off in a breakneck pace, the pounding rushing Sam’s blood into his face, warming it so much and so suddenly his eyes tear up a little.

Some other time, maybe, they could play it off as platonic affection. Sam still remembers Dean giving him good night kisses when they were little. 

Not tonight.

Seemingly oblivious to the disarming inner crisis Sam is having, Dean turns his hand to rub his lips over Sam’s knuckles; then he presses a precise kiss to each of them. When he’s done, Sam’s shaking and his face isn’t the only place where his blood has rushed to.

Sam wants to say “we can’t”. That’s what he’s supposed to say, right? That’s what he’s supposed to think. But he can’t get the words past his lips. They would seem fake and weak, because who is there left to tell them they can’t? God? Their parents? All their friends, dead or broken in their own personal ways?

Absurdly, he thinks about Jess. He’s not trying to hazard a guess about what she would think if she saw him now, but he remembers the ways she saw he was a little odd. Yeah, he adjusted to normal college life, or pretended well enough anyway, but when they spent so much time together, then lived together, he couldn’t hide all the little things he never learned properly, living on the road, doing what they did. Socialization was the word, he knew back then from his intro to humanities. Things that normal families taught their kids and that he just didn’t know, couldn’t understand. She asked about his family, but never pushed. Showed him patiently how to fill in the weird gaps in his knowledge.

Sam wonders if this is another gap that he and Dean have. That they share. That they were never taught family loves each other, but also grows, expands. Walks away, kids leaving the nest, finding their own people to call a family. If they are somehow deep down convinced that if they let go of each other, if Dean doesn’t watch out for him, if Sam doesn’t hold tight to the edge of Dean’s t-shirt tight enough, terrible things will happen.

God, that hypothetical therapist would have a field day with him.

Through the haze of his own jumbled thoughts, Sam finally notices that Dean is a little tense across the bed from him. And of course he would be; he was the one who crossed the chasm; took the first step, and as far as he’s concerned, Sam has just been lying there with no response to give.

Which just won’t do. Carefully, he finds Dean’s face in the dark, touches his lips. They’re soft and plump, and Sam always knew that, but it’s a different story feeling them close around the pad of his index finger ever so slightly.

“It doesn’t matter what I thought when I didn’t have a soul.” Dean tenses even further. Sam can tell he’s nearly ready to bolt. “No, shh, listen. I mean, yeah. I wanted it. I wanted things from you. But it was nothing like I really feel, when I am the real me. The way I need you.”

“You wanna-” Dean starts, voice rough, and he clears his throat. “You wanna maybe make that crystal for me, so we’re on the same page?”

Sam moves his hand to take Dean by the chin and leans up and into him, finding his lips in the dark. It’s brief and just a little bit perfect; a close-mouthed kiss, soft and languid. 

Dean wraps his arms around him and pulls him on top of himself. Sam scrambles a little to find a good place to put his knees, to get his elbows underneath him so he doesn’t crush Dean, but then there they are, not an inch of space left between them. They kiss again, more daring now, lips parting, and it fucks Sam right up.

Hours ago, the world felt hopeless. Future stretched before him like a long road lined with the ghosts of everything and everyone he has ever lost, and crossed by monsters that would never stop killing no matter how hard he and Dean tried to put an end to it. And even now, high on adrenaline and on a rising tide of incoming endorphins, he knows the world is still the same. That he probably has some shitty days before him, they both do. But it’s so easy to just let the weight lift for a while, to focus fully on just how warm and surprisingly soft Dean’s skin is underneath his fingers, how good they are at kissing each other, in sync even though it’s the first time they do this. Dean lets Sam into his mouth, easy and open for it, and Sam lets loose just a little bit of that possessiveness he already feels rising in him, tugging at Dean’s bottom lip with a hint of teeth, fucking into his mouth with his tongue.

They are gaining traction and when Sam shifts and feels Dean’s hard dick right against his own, he nearly blacks out with the shock of it. Maybe they should stop or at least slow down. Take this little by little. Have a chance to think things through because there’s no going back.

“Don’t want to stop,” Sam grunts against Dean’s mouth.

“Don’t have to,” Dean responds right away and when he presses his mouth back to Sam’s, Sam can feel the corners of his lips are lifted up in a smile. 

As so they don’t stop. Later on, there will be things to be dealt with, like when Sam realizes that Dean’s cock looks exactly like it did in his dream, which, even taking their shared lives into account, he just shouldn’t have been able to know. Or when they team up with some other hunters and get concerned, even grossed out looks aimed at them, and realize they have no idea which behavior gave them away because this new thing between them feels as natural as breathing.

But for now, Sam feels like the hole in his chest is getting filled by the handfuls every time Dean thrusts up against him or sucks at the skin of his neck, and he will take it no matter the consequences. 

Because they may have lost a whole damn lot, but haven’t lost each other.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm at [whiskeycherrypie.tumblr.com](https://whiskeycherrypie.tumblr.com).


End file.
